Doctors are giving nearly twice as much to Democrats as Republicans this cycle, teaming with Kamala Harris’ campaign and broadcasting the hazards they see in a second Trump administration on social media.
Some of their colleagues worry all the politicking will further erode trust in public health, but the Harris supporters say they see it as a moral obligation.
“Elections do matter for your health,” Dr. Suhas Gondi, an internal medicine resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who’s involved with the organizing, told POLITICO. “It’s hard for me to not be engaged in politics.”
Doctors’ strong support for Harris is the culmination of a political shift that started with the battles over patients’ rights and HMOs in the early 2000s and gained speed with Donald Trump’s 2016 run — which drove educated professionals into the Democratic Party.
Until then, physicians, as individuals and the organizations representing them, gave more to GOP candidates in every election cycle since the 1990s, save 2008.
Doctors skeptical of their colleagues’ public display of partisanship say they’re worried about how it’s playing in the exam room and what it […]
As the article states: “Doctors’ strong support for Harris is the culmination of a political shift that started with the battles over patients’ rights and HMOs in the early 2000s and gained speed with Donald Trump’s 2016 run — which drove educated professionals into the Democratic Party.
Until then, physicians, as individuals and the organizations representing them, gave more to GOP candidates in every election cycle since the 1990s, save 2008.”
And it continues: “Doctors skeptical of their colleagues’ public display of partisanship say they’re worried about how it’s playing in the exam room and what it means for their profession as another aspect of American life succumbs to polarization. They see conservative patients losing faith in their doctors — and a threat to public health, exemplified in everything from missed vaccinations to forgone cancer screenings.”
Well you might ask, “Why was that?”. Why did physicians give more money to Republicans up until 2016? Well, it’s quite simple actually. The Republicans supported the Physician’s Union – the AMA, whose goal has been to limit competition, and restrict access ( e.g. limiting Residencies) to drive up price thereby insuring physicians income. What changed? Well the corporate control of healthcare is what changed. Physicians were no longer small businesses seeking to increase income. Physicians became “providers” in the transformation of becoming corporate employees. There is no longer an incentive to support Republicans, because as a corporate employee you are subject to the same exploitation as all other corporate employees.
In addition, with the profit motive taking over healthcare the individual patient does not know if their interest is being prioritized in the doctor/patient encounter. This, too, is the result of a number of trends with politicians practicing medicine without a license being one, but the introduction of AI being a gaining influence. The Algorithms are opaque, and the incentives behind them are hidden. It won’t be long before physicians are fired because “they didn’t listen to the computer” . They wanted to practice medicine and that isn’t always profitable for the healthcare corporation. No wonder why patients don’t trust physicians.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If Harris wins will she support labor, or stab them in the back as many of her Democratic predecessors have?